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Left, in his usual camouflage - Chechnya ruler Ramzan Kadyrov; right - head of Ingushetia Yunus-bek Yevkurov; between them - Alexander Matovnikov, Putin's official Presidential Representative in the North Caucasian Federal District.

An agreement to draw up borders between the Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia has sparked protests in the volatile North Caucasus region, according to local media.

Chechnya had laid claims to parts of eastern Ingushetia since the the former Chechen-Ingush Soviet republic split into two in the early 1990s. Despite a 2003 deal handing two villages to Chechnya, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov implied in later years that he wanted more ethnic Chechen settlements inside Ingushetia to join his republic.

On Wednesday, Kadyrov and Ingushetia’s Yunus-Bek Yevkurov signed a deal on the “equivalent exchange” of two unpopulated areas, Interfax reported. Kadyrov later told the agency that “both republics won” in the exchange.

“The only adjustments we made were in the plains, where we yielded exactly a square for a square, a meter for a meter to each other,” Yevkurov was quoted as saying by the state-run TASS news agency.

Local media reported that at least 100 people gathered in the Ingush capital of Magas in the run-up to Kadyrov and Yevkurov’s meeting to protest against the land exchange.

Roadblocks were set up and police and National Guard troop presence was reinforced in anticipation of the protest, according to the Kavkaz-uzel.eu news website.

Law enforcement authorities used batons in carrying out detentions in Magas, the Kavkaz.Realii news website said.

Small protests were also reported in the town of Sunzha near the Chechen border.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had been informed about “the internal tensions,” but said it was premature to “make any diagnoses.”

Both regions have for years been plagued by Islamic insurgent violence.

The border issues between the two Republics indeed go way back. They used to be one, in Soviet Union, later, broke apart, the main reason being, not really mentioned in the article, is that the Ingush did NOT support the Chechens' growing separatism in the late 80s and early 90s, they were and remain loyal Russian citizens, unlike their Chechen relatives, who rebelled back then.

You'll find many Ingush also blame the occasional terrorist attacks in their Republic on the Chechens too, to this day...

Ingushetia is the smaller sibling, of the two, also, they are about 488,000 people, as of this year; while Chechnya is 1,437,000. Majority of ethnic Chechens have left Ingushetia in recent times, moving back to their own Republic or elsewhere in Russia, with the Chechen population in Ingushetia registered at about 96,000 in the 2002 Census and falling to less than 20,000 by the 2010 Census. The usual explanation for this, is that most of these Chechens were refugees who flowed to Ingushetia while Chechnya was engulfed in war, and returned home after peace and order was restored there. Which may be true for many, but I have also heard that, as relations soured between the two peoples, some Ingush have been forcibly chasing Chechen families, long time residents, from their villages in the border areas too...

The border dispute has erupted into violence on multiple occasions. Back in 2013, Yevkurov even deployed his paramilitary forces to the Chechnya border areas

after heavily armed Chechen police apparently crossed over and invaded an Ingush village on the border, and beat up residents there, as well as some local cops who tried to defend their people. The Chechen government, in turn, claimed that their law enforcement personnel had pursued a (Ingush, presumably) criminal suspect from their territory to that village, where locals allegedly interfered and attempted to prevent them from arresting him. The locals, supposedly, violently attacked the Chechen officers, after being asked politely to disperse, and the latter had to then use force to defend themselves. Big brouhaha over jurisdiction, this case raised...

Those are actually two diametrically opposed men, Yevkurov and Kadyrov.

Yevkurov is a lifelong Russian patriot, a decorated officer of the Airborne

Among other things, he was deployed in Kosovo in the 90s, where he was among those who led the Russian Paratroopers who seized the airport there and engaged in a stand off with NATO forces: Incident at Pristina airport - Wikipedia

Kadyrov was a rebel back in the 90s, along with his father, a high ranking separatist leader

The Kadyrov clan later switched sides and began fighting for the feds, in return for new President, Putin, letting them rule Chechnya after it was reconquered.

Naturally, to someone like Yevkurov, even shaking hands with someone like Kadyrov is disgusting, basically, a double traitor, in his eyes, essentially, one who, first, raised arms against his Motherland; and then also turned his back on his former comrades, when the war turned bad for them.

The relationship between these two has never been easy. Some Ingush even blame Kadyrov for a 2009 assassination attempt on Yevkurov, in Nazran, Ingushetia, when an apparent suicide bomber blew up his car next to his motorcade

Nonetheless, Putin likes Kadyrov, who always does his best to keep himself in good graces, and has even sent his guys to kill people for Putin, when called upon

Plus, he keeps a lid on dissent and extremism in Chechnya, of course, keeps that otherwise volatile place relatively quiet. Useful guy to the Kremlin, this way.

Thus, I think, the Kremlin has been leaning heavily on both Kadyrov and, especially, Yevkurov, to settle this shit already, once and for all. So, they are.

But, now, the Ingush are unhappy, as it is them mostly losing good land in this deal, and they are already the smaller Republic too:

Ingush opponents of the deal, including the protesters, have contended that Ingush land is being unjustly handed over to Chechnya, whose strongman leader Kadyrov wields powerful influence and has been accused in the past of interfering in the affairs of neighboring Ingushetia and Daghestan. Activists also claim that Chechens have been illegally building a road in a protected part of Ingushetia's Sunzha district.

Kadyrov is a power hungry SOB, who wants nothing more, than to expand his little empire in the Caucasus. He'd gladly take back over ALL of Ingushetia, like in the Soviet times, if Putin would let him, which, so far, he, thank God, has not been inclined to.

This is actually why the Ingush, more than most people in Russia, dread the potential end of Putin's power in the future, as he ages. Their greatest fear is that he will be replaced by someone weaker and unable to hold Kadyrov and his territorial appetites in check. None of them want to find themselves in his hellish fiefdom...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands of people took to the streets of the southern Russian region of Ingushetia on Thursday to protest against what they said was an unfair land swap deal with the neighboring Russian region of Chechnya.

Social media footage of the protest in Magas, the regional capital, showed several thousand people in the vicinity of the regional parliament, accompanied by the sound of security forces firing into the air to try to disperse the crowd.

The regional parliament on Thursday endorsed the new border deal agreed by the heads of Ingushetia and Chechnya, both majority Muslim regions, on Sept. 26.

The deal envisages a land swap meant to end simmering territorial tensions that emerged after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Protesters in Ingushetia said they believed that the deal amounted to a surrender of territory and that the arrangement favored Chechnya at their own region’s expense.

Artyom Perekhrist, an adviser to Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of Ingushetia, told Reuters that up to 10 of the protesters had accepted an invitation to discuss their concerns with the authorities and that the demonstration was thinning out.

Separately, Yevkurov called for calm in a statement, saying the land swap deal was a good one.

It always makes my spider sense tingle when I see guys doing deals while in a uniform / camouflage. LOL (TOP Picture with Ramzan Kadyrov & Yunus-bek Yevkurov)
This is coming from me, a military guy LOL.

It always makes my spider sense tingle when I see guys doing deals while in a uniform / camouflage. LOL (TOP Picture with Ramzan Kadyrov & Yunus-bek Yevkurov)
This is coming from me, a military guy LOL.

The Vainakh peoples (Chechens, Ingush, and the Kisti across the border in Georgia) take great pride in having, supposedly, successfully resisted the Mongol Invasions back then, the only area in that part of the world who did so.

There is an ancient place in Ingushetia, Ekigal, a very old village, or, ruins and remains, really, at this point, which shows how they lived back then, instead of houses, they built very tall towers, high in their mountains, which allowed the individual clans to defend themselves from these fortifications

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